


we had it (almost)

by ashesandhalefire



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Michael Guerin introspection, Roswell UFO Emporium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 03:26:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18229265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhalefire/pseuds/ashesandhalefire
Summary: As a rule, Michael tries to avoid injecting himself into the business of the town beyond the property limits of Sander’s Auto, the Wild Pony, or Foster Ranch. But when he stumbles upon a potential breaking and entering on his way home, he can't quite bring himself to let it be. Especially not once he realizes which building is the target.-canon compliant pre-1.09





	we had it (almost)

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBzpwAYtvvQ). i had this song on repeat for about three weeks while i wrote this.

As a rule, Michael tries to avoid injecting himself into the business of the town beyond the property limits of Sander’s Auto, the Wild Pony, or Foster Ranch. If he can’t earn himself a paycheck, get a stiff drink, or find somewhere quiet to hide out during the long hours of insufferably lonely nights, he figures he shouldn’t let the problems of Roswell weigh on his shoulders. 

That’s been his policy for over a decade, so when he notices a strange light in the window of a closed storefront on his way home, he has every intention of minding his own business. The town’s rising larceny rate is only partially his fault, and he has no responsibility to look after the vagrants he comes across at two in the morning. Leave that to Max and his badge and his hero complex. Michael has a mattress and a pillow and a second bottle of acetone calling his name. 

The traffic light turns red at the end of the block, and he drums his fingers as he waits at the empty intersection. Glancing back towards the window is mostly an accident. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise him to find the old members of Wyatt Long’s high school posse breaking and entering. They have enough money to buy their ways out of whatever trouble they land in, and they’ve been fidgety since Long took a bullet to the leg. They rove like hyenas, slobbering and mangey and stupid. Destruction of property would be very on-brand for them. But when he looks, he doesn’t see anyone in the shadows. It’s a cool, clear night, but the only thing illuminated by the large swaths of moonlight is the marque on the building. 

Roswell’s UFO Emporium.

Grant Green’s perpetual construction project has sat untouched in the center of town for just under six years. Town supervisors had been livid when construction began just before the height of tourist season, but Grant had assured them everything would be settled in a few months. Bigger and better, he had promised. At the time, Michael had bitterly hoped an electrical mishap might burn the place to the ground, so he’s more than a little confused when he instinctively pulls into a quick U-turn the second the traffic light turns green again. He parks at the curb and takes a deep breath. 

The museum was defunct by the time Grant got his hand on it. Even on its best days, it hadn’t turned much of a profit. It was the kind of place people wandered into when they were looking for a way to escape the triple-digit temperatures, but it hardly received glowing reviews. No doubt Grant planned on using it more as a recruitment center for his delusional followers than anything else. Now, it’s only a matter of time before the town claims the property rights from his estate. 

In a few months, after fresh paint goes up over a new layer of drywall and somebody replaces the old incandescent lightbulbs, the museum will open, lazily refurbished as a more lucrative tourist trap. Any damage done by a few trespassers will be patched and forgotten. 

Still, Michael idles his truck at the curb. 

With a scowl, he reminds himself that sentimentality has gotten him nowhere lately. It got him a couple of decent kisses and a few nights of sex that didn’t end with bloodshed or an acetone binge, but the net gain at the end was heartache and disappointment. He should go home.

He looks over at the building, twisting his hands mercilessly around the steering wheel. The stupid sign still hanging in the window of the ticket booth says “I’ve been abducted! Back in 5.” One of the chains that should be holding the front doors closed dangles uselessly from the metal handle. 

Michael swears, ripping the keys out of the ignition, and shoves his way out of the car. 

The UFO museum never inspired warm and fuzzy feelings. Most of the exhibits were grossly inaccurate, and the display descriptions all took on alarmist tones that made planet-wide invasions sound inevitable. He still gets a particularly troubling feeling in his stomach when he thinks about the room with the interactive dissection display. The dummy was six feet long and bright neon-green with three fingers on each hand and a head shaped like a spade, but the way its foam flesh had been peeled away from its chest cavity still sends shivers down his spine when he thinks about it. Children, two at a time, had been allowed to reach inside and squeeze the fake organs, coating their hands with green blood the consistency of papier-mâché paste. The first time he saw it, on a middle school field trip, he had run to the bathroom to throw up. Isobel told everyone it was because he ate too many chicken fingers at lunch, and one of Kyle Valenti’s friends joked that foster kids always got too excited about free meals. 

But there was one day—one hour—when it was his favorite place in the world. 

Tucked away in the back room with hands on his face and his shoulders and his back, he had felt potential stretch out infinitely in every direction. There was a whole summer to plan, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine sitting in the alleyway behind the building to share sandwiches on lunch breaks or loitering in the empty exhibits on slow days or riding out into the desert after closing and taking time to pick out fake constellations in the real stars. For the first time, his future wasn’t about escape. 

The room is probably an empty shell of damaged drywall and scratched floors now, all the exhibits taken out and moved to Grant’s warehouse, and the energy of that afternoon had burned out and died by nightfall of the same day. Potential scattered in the breeze like ash. Everything changed. Still, the idea of Wyatt Long’s drunken friends littering the place with beer cans and pissing in the corners to cure their boredom makes his jaw twitch. The museum doesn’t belong to them. 

When he slips inside, everything is darker and quieter than he expected. There’s no sign of anybody having been in the deconstructed lobby, and an eerie silence seems to inhabit the rest of the building. Drunken vandals wouldn’t be nearly so stealthy, and that should be enough to satisfy him, give him leave to turn around and go home, but the curiosity wins out. Somebody wanted to get inside badly enough to risk standing on the street to pick the chain lock. The only thing Michael thinks might be worth stealing in here is the copper wiring, which would require breaking open the walls, and that wouldn’t be this quiet either.

Listening for any signs of movement, Michael creeps forward, working his way between the forgotten sawhorses, and checks the room on the right that used to be the gift shop. A faint bit of moonlight streams through the front corner of the window where the newspaper has peeled back with age, and he runs a fingertip over the dusty glass countertop. It used to be filled with poorly-designed plush and cheap plastic necklaces with almond-shaped heads on them. Now, it’s just empty glass cabinetry waiting to be demolished. 

He should be glad to see the kitsch go, but he isn’t. It leaves him feeling unsettled. 

The old manager’s office on the other side of the foyer is undisturbed in its abandonment, and Michael drums his fingers lightly against the wall as he makes his way deeper into the building. The first exhibit room is completely empty, and it’s swallowed in shadows without the light from the front windows. He presses forward, gently nudging obstacles out of the way with a jerk of his chin. The second and third rooms are crammed tight with piles of garbage that was never removed, and he tries to ignore the way that gnaws at him. He works his way past the broken drywall and splintered two-by-fours, careful to avoid the exposed nails and razor-sharp remnants of display cases, and then a soft click echoes from through a doorway on the left. A soft glow from inside guides him the rest of the way across the room.

When he peers around the corner, two thoughts occur simultaneously: it isn’t who he was expecting, and it never would have been anyone else. 

“Remind me again which one of us is supposed to be the criminal,” Michael says after a deep breath, and it’s a little satisfying to watch Alex startle. His crutch hits the side of an overturned spackle bucket, sending it skittering loudly across the floor, and he winces at how the sound echoes in the empty room. Alex has his own phone sitting face-down on a crate, and the flashlight splashes a dull circle of light onto the ceiling. 

When the stillness settles over them again, Michael cross his arms and leans against the wall. The acetone he slipped into his drinks at the bar has officially worn off, which means the ache in his hand will return soon. It’s a constant, dull pain. With enough acetone in his system, it fades to the background like the hum of the electric wires or Grant Green’s alien podcasts, Roswell’s special brand of white noise. Eyes raking over Alex’s rumpled sweatpants and half-zipped hoodie, he thinks he feels the beginnings of twinges radiating from his wrist down into his pinky.

Finally, Alex licks his lips and asks, “What are you doing here?”

“Really?” Michael raises an eyebrow. “I’m the one who just caught you breaking and entering.” 

Lifting his chin defiantly, Alex squares his shoulders. “Well, unless somebody gave you a key, you’re breaking and entering, too.”

“You did all the breaking,” Michael says with a shrug. “I just entered.”

“That’s still trespassing.” Cocking his head, Alex says, “You do know that criminal records aren’t bingo cards, right? There’s no prize for filling in all the rows.”

Alex’s new mean streak is a delicious twist on his high school sarcasm, and Michael leans into it without meaning to. He likes when Alex pulls his hair, too. “Actually,” he says, “I’m in the process of executing a citizen’s arrest, so I think the sheriff’s department will let this one slide.”

“Doubtful.”

Michael clicks his tongue. “I have an in with one of the deputies.”

“I hope you don’t mean Max.”

“God, no,” Michael scoffs. “He’d be first in line with the handcuffs.” 

That earns him a small lift at the corner of Alex’s mouth, and some of the stiffness in his spine eases away. Michael feels his own shoulders relax. Every interaction with Alex has been wrought with tension, and he wants desperately for this night to not end in a fight. 

“Aren’t you staying out of town these days?”

Shuffling around an overfilled trash can, Alex works his way forward. 

“I couldn’t sleep,” he admits with a shrug. He flexes his grip around the handle on his crutch and averts his eyes. The shadows on his face sit heavily beneath his eyes, and Michael frowns.

“Most people would try warm milk first,” he says. “Or Ambien. Trespassing doesn’t usually make the list of top five insomnia remedies.” 

“Then consider it my last resort.” 

With an indelicate hop, Alex hefts himself up onto the crate in the middle of the room and settles his crutch between his knees. His cell phone sits behind him, plunging him into pure silhouette, and Michael steps farther into the room. Purple Heart Airman Alex Manes is not the kind of man to drive across town in the middle of the night in order to break into a construction site. But this isn’t just any construction site.

“Why would you want to come here?” Michael asks. Alex stares silently at his hands, and Michael taps the toe of his boot against a stack of two-by-fours. “It’s not exactly—”

“Don’t play dumb,” Alex interrupts, looking up sharply. “I’m not in the mood. You know why I would come here.” 

It hangs heavily between them. 

Alex had been swift and decisive when he ended things at the drive-in, leaving no room for interpretation. But it also hadn’t been the first time he walked away, so Michael can’t be entirely surprised to be stumbling into the middle of his late-night backslide. The pattern repeats again, a twisted version of an unhappy ending that hurts more than never having him in the first place.

With a huff, he hops up onto the crate beside Alex. It groans beneath their combined weights but holds firm, and he claps his hands down on his knees. 

“Look around, Alex. Everything that made this place what it was? It’s long gone,” Michael says. The wall to the left is where the model UFO hung, backlit by a wall of twinkling little lights. It’s half-torn out sheetrock now. “Whatever you’re looking for, it’s not here. Not anymore.”

Alex shakes his head. “That’s not how it works. This place doesn’t just stop being important—” He breaks off, tapping his crutch against the ground. Michael watches him swallow. “Never mind. You obviously don’t— forget it.” 

Scoffing, Michael leans back and looks at the ceiling. The only reason he even walked through the front door was because of some desperate need to protect the memories living in the walls. But he never loved the cheesy UFO museum. In the years since Alex left town, he never felt himself drawn back to the building itself. Even before Grant took the exhibits out, Michael never felt there was anything inside for him. It’s strange that now, when Alex is finally on the same continent—in the same town, in the same room—he felt drawn to it. Or maybe it isn’t strange at all. 

“I try not to think about that day,” Michael says. It’s a truth and a lie at the same time, and it’s much bigger than a secret kiss or a shattered hand. At first, everything had bled together for him. He couldn’t think about the cave without thinking about the toolshed without thinking about the museum. When he closed his eyes, he saw burning cars and the curve of Alex’s naked hip and his own blood all at the same time. But his mind has worked miracles compartmentalizing that day. Certain parts have never left him. Others are best forgotten.

Alex spins his crutch in his hands and says, “I think about that day all the time.” 

“I’ll bet. I hear PTSD is a bitch.”

“Actually, it was one of the best days of my life.”

Michael scoffs. “Shit, Alex. That’s not saying much for your life.”

“Don’t do that.” Alex frowns.

“Do what?”

“Don’t minimize it.” Wringing his hands, Alex keeps his eyes fixed on his lap. “I’m not stupid, alright? We only had a few hours, and I’m not delusional enough to think— I know what it was. But you have no idea what it meant to me.” His voice wavers, and Michael feels frozen on the spot. The ten lost years have reduced them to unfamiliar strangers, and sometimes it feels like they don’t even speak the same language anymore. They hadn’t needed to say much to each other for things to things to fall into place the first time. It hasn’t been nearly as easy on their second—third, fourth, fifth, he loses count—try.

Alex takes a deep breath and turns away, offering the rest of his confession to the empty room. 

“You were mine when I didn’t have anything else. And I know— I know how it ended. I know what it cost you. But you’ll never understand what it meant to me to have you for as long as I did.”

Heart in his throat, Michael stares at the darkened silhouette of Alex’s profile.

A few weeks ago, he stood in front of Alex and laid himself bare entirely by accident. I never look away. Not really. Alex had seemed surprised and then pleasantly flustered, but Michael had assumed it was because of how much time had passed. Ten years is a long time for a heart to stay alone someplace, just waiting to carry on, but Alex had admitted to it first. Alex had reopened the door. 

But he doesn’t sound like a man who understands how pathetically Michael has wanted him. 

With Max’s voice still whispering in his ear, Michael bites back, _You still have me_.

It isn’t the sort of promise that can be a comfort to Alex now. Michael isn’t really what he wants anymore, isn’t what he remembers having. He isn’t that boy from the back of the truck that just wanted a safe place to sleep. Or maybe, somewhere deep down, he still has it in him to be that soft, but he’s built up a layer of callous and scar tissue on the outside that makes him unrecognizable. 

_I can’t be with a criminal_ , Alex had said, and he hadn’t even known the half of it. 

Max was right when he said that they couldn’t be with the people they love. And still, he’s angry at Alex for the way he’s been hurt, and it makes him feel like an idiot. He hates that the two contradictory truths can live inside him so easily. Like a trap getting angry at a bear for being wary, he resents Alex for running away while hating himself for being undeserving of keeping him. 

It says a lot about Michael that his greatest regret is not letting Alex kiss him the first time he tried. 

Alex takes a shuddering breath suddenly, head ducked low, and rubs a hand against the back of his neck. He seems embarrassed, curling in on himself like it can erase his admission. Leaning closer, Michael bumps their shoulders together to stop his retreat. 

“You know,” he says, “you and me getting together was kind of, like, the most romantic thing that’s ever happened in this town.”

“Fuck off.”

“I’m serious,” Michael insists when he catches the bitterness in Alex’s tone. He isn’t trying to tease him, and he doesn’t want Alex to think he doesn’t appreciate the weight of what happened between them. “It was like a movie.” 

“Are you incapable of sincerity, or do you just enjoy being an asshole?”

“I don’t know. Do you enjoy expecting the worst of me?” 

Alex kicks his heels against the side of the crate. “We made out under the UFOs for ten minutes, and then you went to wait at The Crashdown until my shift ended. If that’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened in this town, the population should be dwindling. People should be fleeing.”

“I wanted to wait with you,” Michael reminds him. “You wouldn’t let me into the booth.”

“I was trying to be subtle.”

Michael rolls his eyes. “There was nothing subtle about that eyeliner. Or the nose ring.” 

“You didn’t mind.”

“No,” Michael says. “I didn’t.” 

Alex turns towards him, still mostly a silhouette, and licks his lips.

“No,” he breathes. “You didn’t.”

A beat passes between them, and Michael’s breath catches in his chest as the realization settles over his shoulders like a heavy blanket. Alex loves him. He’s suddenly surer of it than anything else in his life, and heat rushes to his cheeks. It should be a pleased flush from his racing heart, but his stomach twists with misery as he stares at Alex’s shadowed face. Alex loves him. Alex has always loved him, maybe, for reasons neither of them can fully explain. They could have been happy. If things had just been a little different, they could have been happy.

The light disappears suddenly as Alex’s phone dies.

Michael stares out into the dark to where he knows Alex is, and then he lets his eyes drift shut just long enough to steel himself. 

“I guess that’s our cue,” Alex sighs. 

“Yeah, I think I’m parked next to a hydrant,” Michael says, clearing his throat as he slips off the crate. He rolls his shoulders, trying to settle the rippling tension radiating down his back, and then holds out a hand to help Alex back to his feet. “Can’t afford another ticket.”

“I thought you had an in with the deputies.” Alex dusts off the back of his jeans and then returns his hand to the crook of Michael’s arm as he adjusts his crutch. Michael figures it’s the steadiest influence he’s has ever had on Alex. 

“We both know that was bullshit. Come on. Let’s try to get out of here without killing ourselves.”

Alex fists a hand into the back of Michael’s shirt as they pick their way through the dark, and Michael adjusts himself to the task of subtly moving obstacles out of their way without being able to see what he’s moving. They make it to the first exhibit room, less than a hundred feet from freedom, and then Alex loops his fingers loosely around Michael’s wrist. 

“Guerin.” 

The word is a whisper against the back of his neck, and the hand slips off his wrist and finds his hip instead. Alex curls his arm around Michael’s waist, and he presses himself forward until the lines of their bodies curve together seamlessly. 

This part always comes so easily to them. It’s the rest that gets messy.

Alex nudges his nose against the knob at the base of Michael’s neck, and he splays his hand wide across the middle of Michael’s chest. Body flushing, Michael lets his eyes drift shut as he relaxes against Alex’s warmth. Alex inspires stillness in him that he imagines total peace is meant to feel like, but he knows it’s only the eye of a hurricane. The rest of the storm still rages around them. 

“We can’t,” Michael exhales. 

Pressing his mouth to the curve of Michael’s shoulder, Alex hums. “Why not?” 

There are so many answers, all of them true. 

He can imagine the seductive tilt of Alex’s head as he leans forward, and he can imagine the anxious hunch of his shoulders in the morning light as he slinks out of the Airstream before anyone notices where he spent the night. If Michael closes his eyes, he sees sweaty strands of Alex’s hair sticking to his forehead and spread out on a pillowcase as easily as he sees the angry sneer of disgust that will follow Michael laying his secrets bare. 

The truth is that Michael is a coward. He won’t survive having and losing Alex again. 

“Because I love you.” 

Without the light from Alex’s phone, all they are to each other is shapes in the dark. 

It’s fitting, considering how lost Michael feels navigating the foreign terrain of an emotion this elusive. Anger is easy. He’s seen enough anger manifested in front of him to know exactly what it is. It’s curled fists and free-flying hands and bared teeth and acidic vitriol that seeks out a person’s soft spots and eats away at the tender flesh until he’s crippled by it. It’s ugly and familiar. But Michael has never been loved. He doesn’t know what it’s supposed to look like. All he knows is that being with Alex makes him feel still. It changes the energy in the air, slows the vibrating chaos inside him, and splits him at his loosely-patched seams when it’s over. 

He’s never said those words before. 

“I love you,” Michael repeats into the dark, and he reaches down to cover Alex’s hand with his own. His scarred fingers ache as they twine. The bones don’t bend like they should, and most of the strength is gone, but this feels like the last chance he’ll get to hold Alex’s hand. Distantly, it occurs to him that this is also the first time he’s ever held Alex’s hand. “And it’s too easy to think it can still be like it was.” 

Alex shuffles forward. “Guerin—” 

When Alex finds out, he’ll hate Michael like he deserves.

Michael has never given a damn about the people of Roswell because they never gave a damn about him. A decade in foster care taught him that humans can’t be depended on for anything more than consistent disappointment. He survived just long enough to get himself out, and he did it without help from anybody. Then things went sideways, and then then things turned upside down, and then everything got blown to hell.

He spent the summer after senior year telling himself new truths. He repeated them like a mantra until they were fully incorporated into him. Katie Long was an asshole, just like her brother, and so was Jasmine. Rosa Ortecho was an on-and-off crackhead on a long road to nowhere. If not them on a slab in the morgue, then Isobel, Max, and himself on gurneys in a secret government facility, locked away somewhere nobody would hear them scream. 

Reality is too terrible to bear if those aren’t his truths. That day, what he is became inextricably linked to what he did, and it can never be undone. There are no apologies to offer. Besides, it spiraled out towards disaster more horribly than any of them could have ever imagined, so even their apologies wouldn’t have mattered. There’s no forgiveness, no absolution, and he would do it again in a heartbeat, if given the choice. Sometimes that feels like the worst part.

Still, knowing that the people of Roswell would hate him for what he is and what he’s done doesn’t mean much. He’s had years to practice turning his own guilt inside out, and he doubts that public opinion would weigh too heavily on him. The more pressing concern has always been discovery, capture, and the inevitability of experimentation. Fear of being strapped to a table, of hearing Max and Isobel scream through a vivisection, the worst word he ever learned, is a more persuasive motivator than anything else. 

But when Alex finds out, he’ll hate Michael like he deserves, and Michael will feel every ounce of it. 

That, in itself, is all the evidence he needs to know that he isn’t a good man.

It’s unlikely that their DNA has corrupted them or that they carried murderous instincts halfway across the galaxy, but their hands are soaked in blood from what they did and they will leave fingerprints on everything they touch. Max may have found his way to that conclusion in a heap of self-pitying misery, but Michael hasn’t been able to find a flaw in his logic. Always terrified of being unloved, they have made themselves unlovable. 

Alex has suffered plenty at the hands of people pretending to be good men. Michael can’t stomach being just another in a long line of betrayals. If the best Michael can do now is stay away, it should be enough to redeem some small part of him that remembers an Alex who just wanted to be safe. 

“It doesn’t have to be what it was,” Alex finally says, voice unbearably soft. “It can be new.”

Michael pulls their hands up to his mouth and presses a kiss to the center of Alex’s palm. 

One day, Alex will have to ask himself what it means to be loved by a monster. He will think back on every time that Michael touched him with softness and reverence and wonder what it means that someone so drenched in horror could look at him and want so desperately. If he asked, Michael would tell him that it means he embodies the best of what lesser men want for themselves: bravery, integrity, and an unyielding capacity for kindness. But Alex won’t ask. Instead, he’ll consider every time he walked away and wonder why he came back. He’ll scrub himself raw trying to get rid of an invisible stain. He’ll thank saints he barely believes in for the narrow miss of almost that Michael will cherish for the rest of his life.

“We can’t.”

“ _Guerin_ —” 

Alex isn’t the type to beg, so Michael is entirely unprepared to feel the grip around his waist tighten in protest. He holds himself shock-still, terrified to hear what Alex will say to change his mind and what he’ll need to say to protect himself from it. But Alex doesn’t say anything else. He just squeezes his fingers around Michael’s gnarled hand and draws a long inhale through his nose. 

Then, Alex lets go, and, for the first time, Michael is the one who runs.

**Author's Note:**

> me: write some original fiction for a change  
> also me: writes 4.7k of roswell fic instead


End file.
